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Sam Dylan Finch

Sam. Queer writer, mental health advocate, oversharer. OCD/ADHD. Powered by sparkle emojis, antidepressants, and testosterone. ✨ He/him. More?

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Sometimes it’s hard to articulate what we really mean. I’m practicing.

I’m learning to see myself the way that the people who love me do. What do others see in you that you want to believe for yourself? 🌸

Today I start treatment. I’ll be taking these words with me. 🌱

Hello from a couple queers in an Airbnb as I prepare to usher in my 28th year of life! If these glowing faces are any indication, 28 is going to be glorious. ✨

REAL TALK: If you are transgender and you have an eating disorder, please don’t assume that a medical transition will “cure” your eating disorder. This is a dangerous and untrue assumption, made by trans advocates and clinicians alike. But eating disorders are complex illnesses, and while transition may provide some reprieve from body image struggles and dysphoria, it is not safe to assume you are in the clear. 🍃 I see this especially among trans men with eating disorders. They assume that transitioning will resolve their eating disorder, but MANY simply re-emerge as orthorexia, with exercise as a particular fixation to build muscle and attain a more “masculine” appearance. Yet they publicly tell their followers that transition cured their ED, while still thoroughly entrenched in it! 🍃 As a trans person with anorexia, my transition was critical for relieving my gender dysphoria. However, my anorexia only emerged more intensely, as fat redistribution from testosterone reignited my restriction. The changes that happened during my transition motivated me to continue with disordered behaviors so I could further “degender” my body through thinness. 🍃 I believe it was @chairbreaker that I first heard discussing how fatphobia so often impacts how we gender fat bodies versus thin bodies. Fat men, for example, are feminized by the thin gaze, and fat women who don’t perform femininity in deliberate ways are often stripped of their femininity. 🍃 I believe this insidious form of fatphobia is why thinness can be experienced as “gender affirming” for many trans people, fueling disordered behaviors even AFTER we’ve medically transitioned. And this is why clinicians that work with trans people need to be MORE vigilant — not less! — when trans clients are pursuing medical transition. Eating disorders morph overtime (in cis and trans folks alike!), and even if the presentation of someone’s ED changes, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. 🍃 Are there trans people for whom medical transition greatly diminished certain mental health issues? Absolutely. But we cannot assume that transition is a proper treatment for an ED — that is unproven and far too unsafe to assume. Period.

If all goes as planned, I start intensive treatment for my eating disorder next week. I feel a lot of different emotions, but among them is a very fierce determination to take my life back. In part for myself, which is more than reason enough — but in part because I’ve never felt more passionately about helping people reclaim their own bodies, too. 🌱 My recovery is a battle not just for my own life, but for the world I want to build with all of you. One in which trust in our bodies and compassion for ourselves is as natural and inherent a process as breathing. One in which marginalized bodies can know true safety and traumatized spirits can know true security. These are the things that I fight for daily, and what keeps me in motion as I look to this next chapter. 🌱 I’ve been caught in a whirlwind of intense emotion — probably because when we nourish ourselves, we aren’t so emotionally numbed out... go figure! But with each wave, I’m finding new reasons to be grateful that I’m still here, and able to experience the fullness of my life and strength of my heart. None of this is easy, but I’m okay with that, because I trust that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be and ready for what’s to come.

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